focusit -
demand generation tactics
Increased keyword rankings, organic traffic, reach and social engagement for a B2B SaaS company
The Brief
Established in 2002, focusIT, Inc. is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based SaaS company that provides marketing and workflow management software solutions for mortgage companies.
While focusIT had an established website and social channels, they weren’t seeing much demand generation from their marketing activities. Their social media handles were not growing, and their website was mostly ranking for keywords connected to the name of the brand, branded products or the names of employees and partners.
CFD was tasked with creating and executing a demand generation strategy to improve focusIT’s top of funnel brand awareness and digital footprint.
APPROACH
After doing competitor research to understand the space and opportunities, there were a three of strategic objectives we identified to increase top of funnel demand generation:
- thought leadership content with a focus on state-specific information mortgage companies and employees, such as processors, underwriters and loan officers, would need to know;
- infusing this ungated, high-quality content with new keywords and internal links;
- re-using pre-existing site and social media content.
SOCIAL MEDIA GROWTH
focusIT’s audiences are active on Facebook and LinkedIn, which are very hard to grow organically. By incorporating industry news and insights, tagging the attributed source, we gained traction from followers of these accounts (which share the same audience as focusIT). Without spending money boosting posts or running ads, focusIT’s posts were competitive with established, highly-engaged channels while building virtual relationships with relevant thought leaders in the industry.
Content Writing
To increase search engine rankings for loan officers, underwriters and processors, we focused our efforts on long-form content. focusIT already had a stable of content about the products and services offered on the blog, so we started by polishing the existing posts’ structure for missed opportunities in keyword rankings and internal links. Then, for new content, we added more types of content, focusing on long-form thought leadership for ICPs interested in adjacent business management and sales tasks, such as business marketing, lead generation, partnership opportunities and so on. So doing embedded focusIT’s reputation as a trusted resource for mortgage companies looking to grow and expand whilst broadening the keyword repository from branded and product-related keywords to relevant search queries, improving visibility from a broader audience.
Repurposing content
In order to encourage more activity and referral traffic on the website, we would share old but still relevant content as social media posts weekly – designing and writing fresh visuals and copy. This allowed us to apply a more holistic content marketing approach instead of handling the blog and socials separately.
RESULTS
Social Media
Post impressions on LinkedIn increased from an average of 300 impressions per month to over 2000 monthly in one year, which is 566% YoY growth.
Additionally, focusIT’s LinkedIn page received 292 followers over a year – a 90% increase.
Page Views
Onsite content written by CFD was amongst the top 30 most viewed pages on the site, and the engagement rate on the pages was high in terms of time on site and page views per visit, meaning organic visitors to these pages were qualified, relevant visitors.
Rankings
Out of the 304 keywords focusIT ranks for, our blog posts account for one third of all keyword placements (101 KWs).
CFD’s content strategy pushed focusIT’s pages to positions 1-30 (first three pages of Google Search, where most user activity happens) for medium- and high-competition keywords including target market for mortgage brokers, mortgage ppc, mortgage sales process, mortgage keywords list, mortgage lead management, starting a mortgage business, marketing mortgages to millennials, loan officer tips, mortgage sales funnel, and mortgage pipeline software.
Additionally, one of our most recent content pieces is currently the second-highest URL on the domain in terms of traffic potential, according to SEMrush estimates.
This blog has also landed a top placement in the “People Also Ask” section for search queries containing the following keywords: “what states have prepayment penalties”, “which states allow for prepayment penalties”, “states with prepayment penalty”, “mortgage prepayment penalty by state” and “mortgage prepayment penalty Massachusetts”.
ORGANIC WEBSITE TRAFFIC
In comparison to June 2020 (our first month of content writing), September saw a significant increase in users, new users, and user sessions from organic traffic.
We saw the same increase in organic visitor metrics when doing a year-on-year overview of the same month (September 2020 VS September 2021), too.
Outcome
focusIT has significantly improved demand generation by expanding their reach and audience through organic social media and onsite content. Since implementing these demand generation activities, focusIT has seen an increase in MQLs, SQLs, shorter sales cycles and longer CLTV.